In today's data centers, the clusters of servers in a client-server network that run business applications often do a poor job of managing unpredictable workloads. One server may sit idle, while another is constrained. This leads to a “Catch-22” where companies, needing to avoid network bottlenecks and safeguard connectivity with customers, business partners and employees, often plan for the highest spikes in workload demand, then watch as those surplus servers operate well under capacity most of the time.
In grid computing, all of the disparate computers and systems in an organization or among organizations become one large, integrated computing system. Grid computing is a form of distributed system wherein computing resources are shared across networks. Grid computing enables the selection, aggregation, and sharing of information resources resident in multiple administrative domains and across geographic areas.
Typically, grid computing includes a set of software services that allocate computer resources to different applications. These software services usually run on a software layer of computer systems and cannot modify certain lower level features of the computer systems such as operating systems. Modifying these features can require rebooting the computer systems.